He pulled his gaze from the handsome young warrior and turned back to Jearth. “Can we circumvent the chamber?”
As Jearth began to answer yes, Tiago interrupted with a resounding “no,” and both Xorlarrins turned to regard him with surprise.
“Why would we?” Tiago asked.
“True enough,” Jearth interjected before Ravel could speak. “No doubt the orcs and bugbears will cower before our march and would not dare try to hinder us.”
“And why would we let them do that?” Tiago asked.
Ravel looked from one to the other, crinkling his face in disapproval and incredulity that they would dare have such a discussion around him, as if he was not even there.
“It is true,” Jearth insisted, the weapons master obviously catching the growing and dangerous ire of the spellspinner.
“We should demand a tithing of fodder for our inconvenience of even having to ask,” Ravel replied.
“No,” Tiago again unexpectedly interrupted, and again, both Xorlarrins looked at him in surprise.
“It is past time for a fight,” the young Baenre explained.
“We have had fights,” Jearth reminded.
“With a pack of displacer beasts and a few random creatures,” Tiago explained. “Nothing against an entrenched enemy, the likes of which we will surely find when we do at last come upon this place called Gauntlgrym. This is a great opportunity for us to witness the coordination of our various factions. Let our warriors see the power of Ravel and his spellspinners.”
Ravel narrowed his eyes just a bit at that remark, wondering if what Tiago really meant was that he personally wanted to see how formidable an enemy Ravel might truly prove to be.
“Let us all, warrior and spellspinner alike, witness the tactics, power, and boundaries of these damned driders we have towed along,” Tiago finished.
Ravel continued to stare hard at him, while Jearth gave an agreeing nod, apparently easily swayed by the young warrior’s argument. Or was it that Jearth was easily swayed by any argument put forth by a Baenre? Ravel wondered.
“We need such a fight, spellspinner,” Tiago said directly to Ravel, and the deference in his tone caught the Xorlarrin off guard a bit. “It will bolster morale and hone our tactics. Besides,” he added with an irresistible and mischievous grin, “it will be fun.”
Despite his reservations, suspicions, and general distaste for the Baenre noble, Ravel found himself believing in Tiago’s sincerity. So surprising was that to him that the spellspinner briefly wondered if one of Tiago’s magical items had secretly cast a dweomer upon him to enamor him of the young warrior.
“Well enough,” Ravel heard himself saying, to his surprise. “Coordinate it.”
Tiago flashed him a shining smile and motioned for Jearth to follow, then turned to his mount.
“I will lead the first assault,” Ravel demanded, his tone changing abruptly. “I and my spellspinners will cast the first stones.”
Tiago bowed respectfully and mounted Byok, then waited as Jearth retrieved his own lizard mount. In the few moments he had alone with Tiago, Ravel found that their discussion was not quite at its end.
Free yourself of your envy, Xorlarrin son, Tiago’s fingers flashed at him.
Ravel looked at him suspiciously, then answered, I know not what you mean, presumptuous Baenre son.
Don’t you? came the response, but it was flashed with an expression of honest curiosity and not consternation, minimizing the accusation.
Tiago’s fingers flashed emphatically, and quickly, since Jearth was even then climbing into the saddle, and soon to return. When our elders speak of the promising young males of Menzoberranzan, two names are most often mentioned, are they not? Tiago Baenre and Ravel Xorlarrin. Promising young students, respective leaders of their academies. Perhaps we are doomed to be rivals, bitter and ultimately fatal to one.
His grin as he signaled this showed which of them Tiago expected that to be.
Or stronger, perhaps, would we both become, if we found common gain here. If you uncover this Gauntlgrym and tame the beast of the place, House Xorlarrin will flee Menzoberranzan. We all know this, he added against Ravel’s widening eyes. Do you believe the designs of Zeerith a secret to Matron Mother Quenthel?
His reference to Ravel’s matron without use of her title, coupled with his own reference to House Baenre’s matron mother, raised Ravel’s doubts and his anger, but he suppressed both as he focused on this surprising young warrior’s hints and designs.
Perhaps Baenre, Barrison Del’Armgo, and the other five of the eight ruling Houses will see this as treachery, and will summarily obliterate Xorlarrin and all associated with her. You might be wise to foster relationships with some in Bregan D’aerthe to facilitate your escape in that instance, he added flippantly, for so intricate was the drow sign language that it allowed for such inflection.
Or perhaps not, and in that instance, Ravel Xorlarrin would do well to have a friend within the noble ranks of House Baenre, Tiago finished, as Jearth came riding up.
“Come, my friend,” Tiago said to Jearth, teasing Ravel with the wording as he turned and started away.
Ravel watched the young man go and even whispered “well-played” under his breath. For indeed, Tiago’s presentation had been believable. The young Baenre hadn’t begun to indicate that he would be anything other than an enemy if House Baenre and the others decided to come after House Xorlarrin. After all, though his reference to the mercenary band of Bregan D’aerthe was more than a bit intriguing, Tiago was a Baenre. Bregan D’aerthe worked for, above all others, House Baenre.
Was there a hint, then, that should war befall House Xorlarrin, Tiago might stand as Ravel’s only chance of escape?
The spellspinner couldn’t be sure.
Well played, indeed.
Ravel and his fellow spellspinners could hear the murmurs beyond the wall of blackness that separated them from the main area of the immense underground chamber. Not darkness like the near absence of light so typical in the Underdark, but overlapping magical globes, visually impenetrable and absolutely void of light.
The noble spellspinners of House Xorlarrin had enacted these globes, this visual wall, just inside one of the chamber’s more nondescript entrances. Another wizard had created a floating eye and directed it up above the wall of blackness, so he could function as lookout.
In went the goblin fodder, disciplined because to veer astray was to die, and to utter a sound, any sound, was to die. The ugly little creatures lined up shoulder to shoulder, forming a semicircle within the room, a living shield, while the drow spellspinners silently moved into the clear area behind them and began their work.
Nineteen sets of Xorlarrin hands lifted up high, fingers wiggling, wizards slowly turning and quietly chanting. This ritual had been Ravel’s greatest achievement, a particularly Xorlarrin manner of combining the powers of multiple spellspinners. From those reaching, wiggling fingers came filaments of light, reaching out to fellow wizards precisely positioned, equidistant to others within their particular ring, with four in the innermost, six in the middle, and eight in the outer. In the very center of the formation stood Ravel, his hands upraised and holding a sphere almost as large as his head.
The filaments crossed with near-perfect angles, reaching out and about, drow to drow, like the spokes of a wheel, and when this skeletal structure was completed, those casters in the innermost ring turned their attention to Ravel and sent anchoring beams to the strange sphere, which caught their ends and held them taut.
The eighteen went fast to their weaving, running filaments across those anchoring spokes. White drow hair tingled and rose up in the growing energy of the creation. Ravel breathed deeply, inhaling the power he felt mounting in his anchor sphere, glorious reams of energy tickling his fingers and palms, and seeping into his bare forearms so that his muscles tightened and stood rigid. He gritted his teeth and stubbornly held on. This was the moment that distinguished him from the other promising sp
ellspinners, Ravel knew. He accepted the mounting energy into his body and soul. He merged with this, becoming one, adapting rather than battling, like an elf walking lightly over a new fallen snow, while a less nimble, less graceful human might plod through it.
For Ravel instinctively understood the nature of magic. He was both receptacle and anchor, and as the web completed, the energy mounted even more swiftly and powerfully.
But Ravel was ready for it. He heard his lessers scrambling around, glimpsed drow fingers flashing furiously, relaying commands and preparations.
He was not distracted. Slowly Ravel began to wind his hands around, and the magical web responded by beginning a slow and steady spin, the bright strands becoming indistinct as they left glowing trails behind their movement.
Ravel heard commotion beyond the wall of summoned blackness, as he had expected. Quiet as goblinkin might be, they sounded quite clumsy and raucous to the dark elves.
The globes of darkness began to dissipate, and the wider cavern reappeared to the noble spellspinner, beyond the semicircle of goblin fodder, and beyond that line, barely fifty paces away, stood ranks of orcs interspersed with taller, hulking bugbears.
Several raised voices in protest at the sight of the goblins, with the drow still mostly obscured, but with that glowing, spinning web up high above the goblin line and in clear sight. Despite his discomfort and needed concentration, Ravel managed a smile at the stupefied reactions he noted among the humanoids.
Only for a moment, though, for then the spellspinner threw all of his energy and his concentration into the rotating web. He turned with it, a complete circuit, then another and a third, and as he came around, Ravel pulled back his left arm and threw forth his right, launching forth the web in a lazy spin. It floated out past the goblins, continuing its rotation, and without the anchor that was Ravel, the magical energies contained within it began to escape the spidery structure.
The web reached forth, floating, rotating, lines of white lightning shooting down to split the stone beneath it. Orcs and bugbears, eyes widened in shock, scrambled and tangled, falling all over each other to get out of the way.
The web rolled over them. A lightning blast hit an orc full force and the creature burst into flames, screaming and flailing among its scrambling kin. The whole cavern reverberated in the thunderous reports, one after another, drowning out the screams of the terrified orcs and bugbears.
The drow spellspinners moved aside of the cavern entrance in an orderly fashion, while the goblins scrambled frantically, and less effectively-so clumsily, indeed, that as the next wave of attackers entered, several of the unfortunate goblins got trampled under clacking appendages.
Ravel held his ground, not even looking back with concern, confident that the melee battalion, Yerrininae and his warrior driders, would not dare even brush him.
And they didn’t. With great agility considering their ungainly forms, the driders charged past the noble spellspinner, chitin clattering against the stone. Any stumbling goblin fodder were less fortunate, the driders taking great pleasure in stomping them down as they charged out into the cavern.
To a surface-dwelling human general, this group might have seemed akin to the heavy cavalry he would employ to dissolve the integrity of his enemy’s front line defense, and given the confusion already caused by the dissipating lightning web, the driders proved incredibly effective in this role. With their bulk and multitude of hard-shelled legs cracking against the stone, the stampede alone might have sent the whole of the opposing force running, but adding in the sheer ferocity of the cursed drow creations, and armed with tridents and long spears of exquisite drow craftsmanship, the cavern’s front-line defense was quickly and easily overwhelmed and scattered.
So terrified of the horrid driders, some of the orcs and bugbears retreated straightaway, inadvertently running back under the still floating energy web, running right into the midst of the continuing lightning barrage.
Ravel heard himself laughing aloud as one bugbear flew backward from the jolt of such a bolt, which split the stone floor right before it. The flailing creature never touched back down, for powerful Yerrininae thrust forth his great trident and caught it in mid-flight, skewering it cleanly and easily holding the threehundred-pound creature aloft with but one muscled arm.
Using that trophy as his banner, the drider leader rallied his forces around him and charged in deeper, breaking ranks perfectly to circumvent the lightning web, and coming together once more on the other side, in perfect, tumultuous formation.
Ravel lifted his hands so his companions could clearly view them. Find your place in the fight, he instructed the spellspinners.
And what is Ravel’s place? a drow hand-signaled back.
“Wherever he deems,” the spellspinner answered aloud, for he wanted Tiago Baenre to hear the imperiousness in his voice.
Astride his lizard, Byok, Tiago merely grinned at that response and tipped his shortbrimmed top hat to the spellspinner. Off the young Baenre rode beside Jearth and a host of mounted warriors, veering sharply to the side to go far off to the right of the thundering web. Let the brutish and ever-angry driders and the lesser fighters entangle themselves in that confusing maelstrom while the more skilled warriors strategically conquered the flanks. Shallow caves lined the side wall, with clear indications that these were barracks, some quite high above the floor, and with ladders defensively raised.
Drow mounts could quite readily climb walls. The lack of ladders offered little defense.
“It was an impressive web of power,” Ravel’s sister Saribel said, walking up beside him along with the other two Xorlarrin nobles, Berellip and Brack’thal, the latter looking quite miserable about it all.
“It took too long to effectively create and launch,” the always-stern Berellip disagreed. “Had our enemies not been stupid thugs, they would have fallen over us before we could begin to defend.”
“You deny its power?” Saribel asked skeptically.
“I deny its efficacy against any serious enemy,” Berellip quickly replied, and she added a scowl at Ravel for good measure, one that stung the young spellspinner more deeply because of the added spectacle of a grinning Brack’thal staring at him over Berellip’s shoulder.
“The region of devastation cannot be so easily dismissed, sister,” Saribel insisted.
“So much of arcane magic is useless show,” Berellip interrupted. “Because it is not divinely inspired.”
“Of course, sister,” Saribel agreed, for what priestess of Lolth would not accede before such a truth as that? She bowed gracefully before Berellip and followed the older Xorlarrin priestess away.
“They will find more to kill,” Brack’thal decided, moving into the void beside Ravel. “Your favored ploy did little actual damage, after all. I count no more than five dead from it, and one to the spear of Yerrininae and not the lightning net.”
Ravel slowly turned to regard Brack’thal, and he stared unblinkingly at the elder Xorlarrin’s smile until it at last faded.
“If ever you doubt the effectiveness or power of my creations, do speak up, brother,” Ravel said. “I will gladly demonstrate more closely.”
Brack’thal laughed at the threat.
He could do that, Ravel understood, because Saribel and Berellip were nearby.
That wouldn’t always be the case.
For Ravel, coordinating the battle in the cavern quickly became more a matter of preventing Yerrininae and his drider battalion from slaughtering needed slaves than organizing any combat tactics. The four components of his strike force- spellspinner, drider, drow warrior, and goblin shock troops-hit the orc cavern so hard and so furiously that no semblance of organized defense ever materialized against them.
The young spellspinner found this quite disappointing. He had wanted to test out his battle theories and had concocted some elaborate magic-melee coordination for wiping away stubborn defenses. Besides, any clever victories he might win against opponents who proved themselv
es worthy would only serve to impress his miserable sisters, and even more delicious, to frighten his broken father-brother.
As the final bugbears and orcs were being rounded up for the continuing march, these creatures to serve alongside the goblins as battle fodder, Berellip took the moment to quip that the fight had hardly been worth the energy. She did so publicly, and loudly, and many eyes, including those of Yerrininae, focused on Ravel, whom she was clearly diminishing.
“And not a single drow or drider lost,” Ravel countered, looking to Yerrininae as he spoke.
“To mere orcs?” Berellip countered with a laugh, as if the thought of losing a drow to such a lesser creature was unthinkable.
Her open levity attracted more drow around them, and Berellip played to them loudly.
“To a combined force larger than our own,” the young spellspinner retorted, and he didn’t back down a bit, judging that the respect of his forces might be wavering a bit-and surely that seemed to be Berellip’s intent.
Ravel looked at his older sister directly, matching her intense stare. Then he spun away with a laugh, taking center stage, commanding center stage.
“Mere orcs?” he asked, addressing all around him now. “A most relative term, would you not agree? They are ‘mere’ only when measured against a superior force, and we are that, to both the orcs and the clever bugbears who ruled this cavern. And not simply superior, for if that, then surely we would have suffered losses, which we did not! They were overwhelmed from the start, because of preparation, dear sister. In a search of history, too many are quick to dismiss losers as inept, rather than attribute the crushing victory to the brilliance of the victors.”
“Do tell,” Berellip said with a fair amount of sarcasm apparent in her tone.
“Our easy victory here began with the selection of the force,” Ravel insisted. “We have found balance, magic to sword, finesse to sheer power.” He wanted to add, but didn’t need to-and didn’t think it wise, given Berellip’s apparent challenge to his authority-that he, of course, had been the one to select the expeditionary force.
Charon's claw tns-3 Page 7